1859 slave memories pre juneteenth
fiction
edward w pritchard
five minutes from freedom
fiction
edward w pritchard
Usually a hazy swirl surrounds our recollections of the past. But to this day I can vividly remember the slave auction house there on tenth street in Wheeling Wv [ then called Wheeling Virginia] one rainy Tuesday afternoon at 2 o'clock in the afternoon back in 1859. My Mother's great grand Mother rode in a wagon by the large auction house building as a little girl and her Mother ordered her to close her eyes so she couldn't see
the chained slaves waiting to be taken to be sold.
Of course my Mother's relatives were too poor to own slaves but by circumstances they found themselves in a slave owning country and state.
To this day I recall my Mother's great grandmother thinking as she peeked at the chained slaves back in 1859 that they were only five minutes from freedom. Up over the roof of the slave auction building on tenth street in Wheeling Wv and ten miles North across the River to Martin's Ferry Ohio and a colored person could be free.
Today I live in Ohio, north of the Ohio River about ten miles south of some all black neighborhoods. The fact that we had slavery in the United States saddens me. If I had lived back in civil war times I suppose I might have been killed as a soldier fighting in an Ohio regiment. Many people in America sacrificed to end slavery in the past of our Country's history. Me, today I enjoy black blues music; scrapper blackwell, tampa red, lead belly, elmore james, muddy waters and many others. The music is the memory of the suffering of the past.
